As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
An enterprise computing system, or enterprise system, is one example of an information handling system. In general, the enterprise system includes several computer components that are interconnected to serve the different needs of a business or organization as opposed to a single user or application. For example, an enterprise system such as a storage area network (SAN) may include a network of servers and storage devices such as hard disk and tape drives that allows data to move between the components by various interconnections.
As such, the SAN may incorporate a very complex topology. Because of this complex topology, network administrators frequently encounter problems while performing diagnostics in an attempt to determine the cause of a fault or problem in the enterprise system. Examples of faults in a storage array include cable failures, unplugged switches or host bus adapters (HBAs), and driver failures.
Typically, when a fault occurs, the enterprise system receives a status notification and may, depending on the set up of the system, cause an alert message to be sent to a network administrator. For example, the alert message is sent to a network administration via a paging system regarding the status notification. The message, however, merely informs the administrator about the status and, typically, does not include information regarding the actual problem. The network administrator must then begin to diagnosis the cause of the problem.
Currently, the administrator relies on error logs to diagnosis the problem. The error logs may be stored in a central computer, but may also be resident on individual computers. Thus, the administrator generally undergoes some detective work to research and collect the errors associated with the problem.
Because large enterprise systems such as a SAN may include many computer components, the administrator may need to review extensive error logs before locating the errors associated with the problem. Depending on the skill of the administrator or the difficulty of the problem, the administrator may spend several hours attempting to correlate the errors with the actual problem to determine the root cause of the error.